If you are keen to make sure you have a personal website that is right for you and your personal brand, there are always going to be so many things to consider, and the truth is that it might be easier than you think to make this a reality.
You will however need to think about some of the things that are going to be important for you to consider here, and it’s vital that you are aware of these as early on as possible. If you can do that, it’s going to mean that you are much more likely to build the kind of website your personal brand can realistically benefit from.
Therefore, if you can get the following in place, you should find that your personal website is going to be much more likely to succeed for you, and that your personal brand is going to be a much stronger force.
Let’s take a look and see what might be involved in all this that you will want to think about.
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Define Your Brand
First of all, you need to make sure that you are really clear on your personal brand – what it is, how it looks and so on.
You need to make sure that you know what its purpose is and what it is likely to look like. If you can get this down as accurately as possible, it should mean that the website itself is going to be a much more powerful entity, and that it will reflect your personal brand so much more effectively and easily, so this is certainly something to be aware of and to aim for.
With that in mind, ask yourself what it is that you want your visitors to know about you, and figure out what you are intending to promote specifically, whether that is your work or services, or your general expertise. You might also want to think about who you are trying to attract – customers, clients, employers, collaborators, or a combination?
Your answers to these kinds of questions will help shape all of your website considerably, so it’s really important to make sure that you are asking these of yourself and answering them as honestly and fully as you can.
That is going to make for a much stronger and more powerful website, and a stronger personal brand as well.
Choose The Right Platform
A lot can be said about choosing the right platform for your site, and it’s something that is really going to make a difference to the end result of your personal site.
So make sure that you are aware of the differences and what they might mean for you and your brand. The right platform for you will depend partly upon how much you have in the way of technical skills and needs, but there are some popular options that you should definitely bear in mind here.
That includes, for instance, WordPress, a very popular and flexible platform that is going to be great for a blog or if you have a portfolio to show off. Or you might want to opt for Squarespace, which gives you a really easy building experience with lots of sleek templates. There are lots of others too, but the point is to go for one that is really going to help you to design the website you are dreaming of.
If you can do that, you’ll find that you are going to end up with a site you are really happy with so much more easily.
Get Help With Design
It might be that you want to get some help with all this too, and that is certainly something that is worth thinking about as well.
Getting some help with the design of your website means that you can simply offload quite a lot of the tricky technical work to those who really know what they’re doing, so this can be a great option if you don’t happen to quite have some of the technical skills that others might have.
For this, it’s best to go to a custom web design team. They will be able to take your personal brand and run with it, and create for you a great site which is going to reflect your personal brand very well indeed. It’s amazing how well this can really work, and it’s something that you are going to find really useful to consider for sure.
Nail The User Experience
It’s really important, whether you are designing your personal website on your own or getting some help, to make sure that you really nail the user experience of the site, because a cluttered or confusing website will always have the effect of driving visitors away.
Keep it clean and simple if you want to make sure that people are likely to stick around, which means sticking to consistent color schemes and using easy to read fonts.
You should also make sure that you are thinking about the mobile aspect of the site – is it mobile-friendly, and have you made sure of this by checking it yourself on a mobile device? Most users now will visit the site on their phones, so this is not just a handy thing to consider, but an absolute essential when it comes to the design of the site.
You should also do all you can to make sure the site is as fast to load as possible, which can be achieved through compressing images and avoiding too many heavy animations and the like.
Remember: the experience of your site is going to reflect on what people think about your personal brand, so it is really in your interest to make sure that you are getting this down as smoothly as possible.
That is something that is really going to help you a lot and you will find that you are probably glad to have done it.
Remember The Essential Pages
There are certain pages that are always going to be must-haves in your website, and it’s really important to make sure that you are doing everything you can to include these as well as possible.
If you don’t have these, it will often mean that you are going to struggle to make your brand stand out and that your site is not going to be useful to people, so it’s a really important thing that you need to make sure you are thinking about. So what are some of these essential pages, and why are they quite so important?
The homepage is obviously vital, and you need to make sure that you are using it in such a way that it introduces who you are as strongly as possible. It should have a clear message and a strong introduction, and you should make sure that it immediately reflects your brand as clearly and honestly as possible.
You should also have an About page, which shows your story, experience and what it is that makes you unique. This is one of those pages that are going to be vital if you want to make sure you are really standing out, and that is obviously important if you are trying to succeed as a personal business in general. So avoid this page at your peril.
You should probably also include a page for your work samples or a portfolio page, so that you can showcase your best work and ensure that it is going to really look its best. This is where you are really going to start drawing people in, so make sure that it is attractive and that it looks its very best.
Finally, having a contact page means that potential clients and collaborators can actually get in touch with you.
If you have those pages, you are going to have a much more complete site, and it will therefore be a much stronger tool for your business and your personal brand in general.
Optimize For SEO
You want to make your personal website as visible as possible, which means ensuring that it is able to be found on search engine results pages as easily as possible.
That means you need to work on optimizing the SEO of the site, which is something that you can probably do yourself easily enough – but it really is going to be essential to make sure you are thinking about it from the start.
To that end, make sure you are using relevant keywords throughout your content, so that people are more likely to find you through the right queries. Write a strong and compelling meta description for each page, and add alt text to images for accessibility. You should then work on obtaining backlinks from social media, guest posts or directories.
If you can do those things, you are going to find that it helps to get your site seen, and that in turn will make it a much more powerful tool in actually helping your brand to shine.
Ready to Launch Your Personal Website?
Here’s the truth — your personal website is often the first impression you make.
Not your handshake. Not your resume. That little corner of the internet becomes you in digital form.
So don’t overthink it, but don’t phone it in either.
You don’t need to be a tech wizard. You just need clarity about who you are, what you offer, and who you want to reach. Once you lock that in, the rest is a series of small, doable steps: pick your platform, focus on clean design, make it mobile-friendly, write with purpose, and optimize for search.
Done right, your site will work while you sleep. It will introduce you to people you haven’t met yet. Open doors you didn’t even know existed.
So take a weekend. Build the thing. Put it out there.
Because if you don’t shape your story online, someone else will do it for you — or worse, you’ll stay invisible. And that’s not an option anymore.
